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THE 



PROVIDENCE AND THE MAN ; 



OR, 



Ulysses S. Grant, 



IN THE 



War of the Rebellion. 



A COMPENDIUM 



By T. W. PORTER. 




BOSTON: 
Wles & Co., 1 8 Arch Street, 
' 1 888. 




THE 



PROVIDENCE AND THE MAN ; 



OR, 



Ulysses S. Grant, 



IN THE 



War of the Rebellion. 



j^ 



(^ 



^1^ 





X 


A COMPENDIUM. 






II 




( AUG20 188[ 








BOSTON : 




OF L. E. CowLES & Co., 1 8 Arch 


Street, 



r^^ 



Copyright, iSSS, by Thomas W. Porter. 
All rights reserved. 



The Providence and the Man. 



In the world's history, every great war has not only 
developed great leaders, but has developed new means 
and methods of conducting campaigns, both in a 
strategic and tactical sense ; and the man who has 
most clearly comprehended the needed means and 
methods, and has been most prompt and vigorous in 
putting the same in force, has borne away the honors, 
which the world ever has and ever will cheerfully and 
liberally bestow upon those men who, in great crises, 
when nations struggle for existence, exhibit that highest 
type of moral courage and intellectual force, which 
enables them to successfully command and direct the 
accumulated human force, on which the weighty 
struggle hinges. 

In the days of primal warfare, when the bludgeon 
was the sole weapon, we may well believe that physical 
size and prowess would most often confer leadership ; 
and only those mental qualities were needed which 
confer power to exercise authority and command over 
the weaker and more impressible natures, who made 
up the uncouth rabble constituting the followers. 
When progress and invention had slightly refined the 
weapons of war, and the war-club had given place to 



4 
the spear, or in other words, when killing by external 
blows and bruises had been exchanged for penetrating 
wounds, an increase of skill on the part of war chiefs, in 
handling their followers, became necessary, and was 
exercised. As another advance was made in the mode 
of warfare, by the introduction of the earlier and rude 
projectiles, such as the sling, the javelin, and the 
arrow, with rude shields, that antedated and fore- 
shadowed armor, a marked increase in the skill and 
mental resources of leaders became requisite and was 
supplied ; formation and method of movement, of bodies 
of men, was adopted, and to a material extent became 
an operative substitute for mere brute force, expended 
in more brutish blows and thrusts. 

Another stride in the art of war consisted in substi- 
tuting a short sword or dagger for the war-club, and 
combining therewith a weapon that was both a projec- 
tile and a spear, while the bearer of these arms further 
defended himself with a shield. The Romans furnish a 
marked example of this stage in warfare, and it has 
been said by a great historian (Montesquien) that the 
Roman "pilum," their combined spear and javelin, 
subjugated the world; and certain it is, that with the 
introduction of these improved weapons, came the 
entrenched camp, the formation in line of battle, the 
order of battle, reserves, and mounted and foot soldiers, 
as also plans of campaigns and bases of supply; all 
which shows that as mechanical skill had improved and 
diversified implements of war, the skill, genius, and 
ability of leaders had taught them the advantage to be 



5 

derived from strategy, tactics, fortifications and system 
in war, and hence the moral forces to the same extent 
supplanted mere brute force ; and at each stage of 
progress in the art and weapons of war the relative 
death rate in battle was sensibly diminished. Thus 
showing that the mental qualities and moral forces, to 
a large extent, were equivalents or substitutes for the 
mere physical force, wherein and whereby war had its 
inception and early contests. 

Upon the weapons and methods of warfare of the 
Romans, and the nations who contended against them, 
no material change or progress was made, save perhaps 
improvements in defensive armor, until the invention 
of gunpowder, that most humane and refining of all the 
agencies of war, if not of civilization ; for by its magic 
and influence, brute force largely ceased to be a con- 
trolling agency in war ; while true mental and moral 
courage and the higher emotions of man were, by this 
new element, rendered the absolute controlling agencies 
in the arbitrament of war and consequent fate of 
governments. During the centuries of development of 
the means and methods of the warlike use of gunpowder, 
and in the increase in its effectiveness, or in the pre- 
cision and so-called deadliness of the weapons in which 
it was utilized, the death ratio of combatants has 
decreased in the inverse ratio of such improvements in 
arms ; thus showing that skill and ability in leadership 
have more and more become the essential elements in 
deciding battles and campaigns, and the consequent 
decision of the issues involved. 



At the breaking out of the rebellion in this country, 
practically all supposable improvements in firearms 
had been affected ; but during the entire war the 
armies were mainly devoid of two of the chief of these, 
the breech loading rifle and the magazine rifle ; but 
with these exceptions, we employed all of the modern 
appliances of war, which by use in European campaigns 
had established their reputation for effectiveness and 
utility. 

But although we had the benefit of the experience 
of divers modern wars, in regard to rapid concentration 
by use of railroads, of hastily constructed earthworks, 
the arm of precision (the rifle), by means of the 
" minie ball," the French tactics of celerity, the methods 
of clothing and subsisting armies, yet the war of the 
rebellion was so far unlike any that preceded it, in 
many of the main controlling conditions, that the genius 
and ability of leaders, in adapting their methods to 
existing conditions, was destined, as in so many earlier 
wars, to constitute the determining element of the great 
contest. 

A glance at the principal conditions under which the 
rebellion was to be subdued, shows the vast dissimilarity 
between the same and those dominating any previous 
war. 

The railroad, as a means of military transportation, 
was not new, but the vast comparative scale on which 
it was to be here employed, by both parties, rendered it 
almost entirely new for such purpose. The extent of 
the theatre of war, when considered in connection with 



7 

the difficulties attending both land and water transit, 
was unparalleled. The natural defensive strength of 
the rebellious territory had never before existed in an 
invaded civilized country ; this resulted both from the 
configuration of the face of the country, the dense and 
almost impenetrable character of its extensive forests, 
the interminable net work of its water courses, and 
largely to periodical overflow of a large portion, within 
which were situated many of the most important 
strategic points. The combatants of both sides, judged 
as a whole, were, in point of intelligence and mental 
vigor, far in advance of any bodies of men who had 
ever before met in mortal combat ; and the rank and 
file of each was inspired by high and patriotic motives 
and principles (when judged from their respective 
stand-points) ; one seeking to found a new nation, the 
other to preserve the integrity of a nation already 
established. While in point of trained military scholars, 
who aspired to become leaders, the odds were with 
neither side, as the graduates of the national military 
school arranged themselves with judicious, or rather 
injudicious, impartiality on the respective sides of the 
contest, as their earlier associations mainly prompted 
them. 

Of all our military officers, none had received the ben- 
efit of practical experience in a large contest, but only 
in a puny war, with a puny nation, Mexico. Hence all 
our leaders were to be ultimately selected upon the 
Darwinian system, " the survival of the fittest," or more 
properly speaking, the fightest. Gen. Scott, who, in 



8 

experience as a commander, outranked all others, was 
so far enfeebled by age and infirmity as to be forced to 
abandon even the nominal command of the Federal 
army after Bull-Run, that first rude awakening of the 
Federal government to the possibilities of disaster and 
defeat; and that to preserve the union they must 
employ that only known and universal remedy for 
diseased nations, to wit. : liberal doses of death, 
judiciously and persistently administered. 

When Gen. Scott retired and it became necessary to 
select his successor, the choice fell upon Gen. Mc- 
Clellan ; not because there was any actual valid reason 
therefor, but, first, because there was no special reason 
for selecting any one else ; and, second, because he 
had during all his military life been a " headquarters 
favorite ; " and for that reason had been selected by 
the War Department as one of the officers to visit the 
Crimea and witness the military operations there ; his 
report thereon, elaborately illustrated, having been 
published by the Government. Upon his advent, as 
commander-in-chief, all the fulsome adulation of the 
press and the laudatory productions of army corres- 
pondents were called into active play to give eclat and 
prestige to the " Young American Napoleon," as he 
was then styled, (but significantly, which Napoleon, was 
not stated). The army of the Potomac was by him 
forthwith put upon a first-class dress-parade footing; 
foreign princes glittered upon the staff, with all their 
inherited and easily earned decorations, and parades 
and reviews vied with each other in putting down the 



9 

rebellion, at a safe distance, and in the most pacific and 
amicable manner. 

Having frittered away the time from August, 1861, 
till the spring of 1862, McClellan led the army of the 
Potomac forth on the campaign to Richmond, en- 
countering at Manassas Junction a line of deserted 
earthworks and a heavy array of quaker guns. Pur- 
suing his way, he was confronted by the fortifications 
of Yorktown, defended by the slight-of-hand manoeuvr- 
ing of a small force of men commanded by Gen. 
Beauregard ; and instead of " feeling " this force with 
sufficient vigor to demonstrate its diminutiveness, he 
sat leisurely down before the place and sent his despatch 
to Washington for the transfer of the heavy siege guns, 
of its forts, to Yorktown, that he might invest and reduce 
it by regular siege operations. Before this military 
farce had made material headway, the path towards 
Richmond was opened to McClellan by Beauregard's 
withdrawal to the Chickahominy, where, from the actual 
opening of the fighting, by the abortive rebel attack on 
McClellan's extreme right, at " Beaver Dam Creek," 
until the practical close of the campaign at the mis- 
judged rebel assault of " Malvern Hill," it may be 
described briefly as a series of desperate rebel attacks, 
bravely resisted, and succeeded by the retreat of the 
union army, regardless of the immediate success or 
repulse and slaughter of the attacking force. In the 
language of Gen. Lee's order to his army, " the siege 
of Richmond had been raised ; " but it had been 
achieved at a fearful loss of life to the Confederates, 



lO 



whose reckless methods of attack and assault were 
described by a foreign prince on McClellan's staff, as 
"glorious but not war; " the waste and destruction of 
life on the part of the assailants violated all known 
rules of war. The loss of life on the part of the Union 
army was, in respect to results, greater than that of the 
Confederates, for the latter had succeeded, while the 
former, from the first shock of collision, had been 
handled by McClellan solely with the object of " saving " 
it ; and he assumed and acted constantly upon the 
assumption, that only by persistent retreat from before 
Richmond and its defenders could his army be 
saved. 

During this Richmond campaign, McClellan not only 
commanded the army of the Potomac, but he also 
discharged the fourfold duty of Ordinance Officer, 
Quartermaster, and Commissary General, and Medical 
Purveyor, to Lee's army ; for it is a fact, vouched for by 
the ablest of Lee's generals, that for months after that 
campaign, various detachments of the Confederate army 
were on duty exploring the line of retreat of the Union 
forces, and gathering vast stores of the various material 
of war, abandoned by McClellan, and which supplied to 
Lee a want that could have been filled in no other 
manner. In fact, in no respect is more clearly shown 
the utter failure by McClellan in adapting means and 
methods to the then existing conditions of war, than in 
the needless material carried along by him in this 
campaign. It more nearly resembled that of Pompey's 
army of patricians, before the battle of Pharsalia, than 



II 



of men campaigning in a rugged, broken, defensible 
country, where the least possible amount of what the 
Roman military writers termed ivipedinienta, evinced 
the best military genius. 

Next followed Pope's disastrous second Bull Run 
campaign, and the marching of Stonewall Jackson's 
" foot cavalry " around the Union army, and the sacking 
and burning of the Union depot of supplies at Manassas. 
This abortive struggle of the army of the Potomac was 
followed by the seemingly reckless invasion of Mary- 
land by Lee, after excusing from duty a heavy 
percentage of his forces by reason of their being 
barefoot. This movement, as also the still more 
reckless one of dividing his army in order to capture 
the Union forces at Harper's Ferry, was predicated by 
Lee upon his knowledge of McClellan, (who had again 
assumed command of the army of the Potomac), and 
of his timidity, caution, and dilatoriness of movement. 
And, although McClellan was, by Lee's famous " lost 
despatch," put in full possession of the plans of the 
latter, yet he failed in three material respects, success 
in either of which, while perfectly feasible, would have 
ruined Lee. 

First, he failed to drive his army with sufficient 
velocity and force between the divided wings of Lee's 
army to prevent their reunion, and to insure the capture 
of, at least one wing, with Lee's entire train. In proof 
of this is the established fact that McClellan consumed 
forty-eight hours in advancing six miles and developing 
his line of battle ; all of which could have been easily 



12 

effected in less than one-fourth the time thus squan- 
dered. 

Second, during the battle of Antietam, he allowed 
heavy columns of attack to be delayed by Confederate 
skirmish lines ; and, while Fitz John Porter's entire 
command lay inactive near McClellan's headquarters 
during the whole battle, the Confederate line at a vital 
point, in Longstreet's front, was defended for a while, 
only by two small field pieces worked by staff officers, 
and the flags of decimated North Carolina regiments 
held up by a few survivors; this state of affairs, as 
shown by reliable men on both sides, being fully visible 
from McClellan's headquarters on the mountain. 

Third, allowing Lee's reduced and over-fought army 
to retire unmolested and unattacked, back across the 
Potomac, among his friends and abettors in Virginia. 

This closed the military service of Gen. MeClellan, he 
being succeeded by Burnside, who led the army to the 
military slaughter-pen of Fredericksburg, where Lee 
had ample leisure in which to fortify to his heart's 
content, and where Burnside attacked in the identical 
manner which Lee himself would have selected had 
the choice been tendered him. It was the taunt of 
Napoleon L that, till his time, European military 
commanders marshalled their forces, waited for a 
pleasant day, and then, raising their chapeaiix de bras, 
politely announced to the enemy, " Gentlemen, I am 
ready, please deliver your fire." But at Fredericks- 
burg these conditions were exceeded, for every condition 
tended to insure success to the enemy and defeat to 



13 

the Federals. In fact, it seems never to have occurred 
to these Federal commanders that an attack upon Lee 
could be made except with the Union army directly 
between his forces and Washington, nor did it appear 
to be observed as an element in the contest that Lee 
could not safely allow the Federal army between his 
forces and Richmond. 

Next, Hooker led the army to wretched defeat at 
Chancellorsville ; when Mead assumed command and 
fought the defensive battle of Gettysburg, escaping 
defeat by reason of the ill-timed and disjointed attacks 
by Lee's forces. But, had our entire line been simul- 
taneously engaged on the second day, when Longstreet 
hurled his force against Little Round-Top, or had our 
line been so engaged when Pickett rushed upon our 
centre, on the third day, if our line had not been 
carried it would have been due to better fortune than 
had ever before smiled upon this oft-defeated and 
wretchedly handled army. 

As it was, Lee was permitted to retire unmolested 
with his shattered army, his extended and plunder- 
laden trains, and his numerous wounded, through the 
narrow mountain defiles, across the Potomac, and into 
camp in Virginia ; although his ammunition was ex- 
hausted and his means of crossing the river but the 
scantiest. This campaign practically closed the oper- 
ations of the army of the Potomac till the final advance 
on Richmond. 

Having thus traced the operations of the main Union 
forces east of the Alleghanies, let us turn to those in 



the west. During the year 1861 a few minor battles or 
affairs had occurred, and, at the opening of 1862, 
Gen. Halleck was in command, with headquarters at 
St. Louis, and was busily engaged in doing nothing. 

Among Halleck's subordinates was Ulysses S. Grant, 
who, at the opening of the war, was a private citizen, 
and who possessed so little influence, notwithstanding 
his experience and commended service in Mexico, as a 
subaltern, that it was only by the most fortuitous 
circumstances that he was first placed in command of a 
regiment of volunteers, and afterwards commissioned as 
a brigadier-general. This man comprehended from 
the first the radical departures necessary, under the 
anomalous conditions of the war, in order to insure 
success, and which may be stated in three words, — 
promptness, directness, and persistence, — and he urged 
upon Halleck the necessity of prompt and heavy 
movements against the rebel forces. These sugges- 
tions, at first treated by Halleck with contemptuous 
disregard or rebuff, at length (upon the same theory 
that a father allows a reckless boy to ride a wild colt, 
as he will no doubt be thrown, and learn better, by half 
breaking his neck) elicited an unwilling and ungracious 
assent for Grant to move against Fort Henry, the 
prompt fall of which enabled Grant to strike across to 
Fort Donelson, and, by a series of masterly movements, 
compel an unconditional surrender thereof. And for 
these services Gen. Grant was rewarded, by Halleck, by 
being ignored in the reports to the war department, by 
being put out of command, and by the recommendation 



15 

of the promotion, over him, of Gen. C. F. Smith, one 
of his subordinates at Donelson. 

Gen. Smith assumed command of this army by order 
of Halleck, and marched it to Pittsburg Landing 
(Shiloh), where it went into camp, and, by the fatal 
sickness of Gen. Smith, was again commanded by 
Gen. Grant, who fought the crucial battle at that 
point, which, as Gen. Grant has said, forever established 
the superior "staying power" of the Western men, 
when arrayed against those of the South, a fact of 
incalculable benefit in all the subsequent operations 
of the Western army. 

For this service. Gen. Grant was again promptly 
dispossessed of all command, and Halleck, with one 
hundred thousand men, crawled timorously up to 
Corinth, fortifying, on an average, at every half mile, 
thus allowing Beauregard ample time in which to 
remove all men and munitions of war, so that, when 
Halleck at last drew up his army before Corinth, in 
order of battle, and announced his readiness for and 
expectation of, being at once attacked, the last Confed- 
erate was "twenty miles away," in full retreat; and 
Halleck's victory consisted in the capture of a few 
broken-down army wagons and decrepit contrabands. 

Gen. Halleck, having now fully established his repu- 
tation as a first-class national military nuisance, was 
removed to Washington ; probably upon the theory that 
if his mischievous interference was divided equally all 
around the armies it would not materially interfere with 
any, and so would be neutralized. 



i6 

The command of the Western forces now drifted 
back to Grant, not because the powers that were, had 
the sense of justice, or the common sense, to confer it 
upon him, but because there was no one else to assume 
and exercise it. And, after various lesser operations, 
including the battle of Corinth, he turned the whole 
force of his energy and genius to the capture of 
Vicksburg, which he effected by disregard of long 
established and supposed fundamental rules of con- 
ducting offensive campaigns, and by adapting his 
methods to the anomalous conditions and circumstances 
with which he was confronted. Suffice it to say, that 
he inverted the old and established method and 
direction of approach, cutting adrift from every base, 
and advancing to the rear of Vicksburg, by first passing 
its front, with no material of war, and no source of 
supply, save an improvised, and well-filled, ammunition 
train, and the gleanings of the enemy's country ; and 
with no source of assistance, save the favor of God, the 
ground under his feet, the fleet of Admiral Porter, and 
the confident and invincible men whom he had trained 
to successful war. Having stolen, like a thief in the 
night, into this campaign, — for fear that Halleck, or 
the secretary of war, or the administration, or perhaps 
all combined, should forbid the move, — and having 

o 

refused to comply when peremptorily ordered by 
Halleck to retreat, he was rewarded at the brilliant 
termination of the struggle, by a censorious despatch, 
from Washington, for having permitted the parole of 
Pemberton's men in the manner that he did ; and, as in 



17 

case of each of his earlier successes, his army was 
broken up and scattered, notwithstanding his earnest 
and repeated requests to be allowed to move against 
Mobile, (which, if permitted, would have compelled 
Bragg to move to its defence, thus relieving. Rosecrans 
and averting the disastrous battle of Chickamauga ; 
and, after the inevitable fall of Mobile, Grant would 
have swept up the coast, capturing every seaport of the 
Confederacy, and would have terminated the war by 
taking Richmond in the identical manner that he had 
taken Vicksburg), and it requires no great degree of 
" hind-sight " prophecy, to assert, that, but for the 
inexorable stress of subsequent events, he would not 
again (after Vicksburg) have been allowed to exercise 
command. His reputation was even then too well 
established, as one of those men who are all the time 
doing something, to permit him to be popular at army 
headquarters. Such men were always in very great 
disfavor with the erudite Halleck. 

But providence had a strategy of its own, even 
though it employed imbeciles in developing it, and, 
while yet Gen. Grant lay disabled, from the falling of 
his horse, the disastrous battle of Chickamauga had been 
fought, by Rosecrans, with a loss of sixteen thousand 
men, leaving the administration and war department, in 
the language of Gen. Grant, " nearly frantic," and then 
it was that they remembered that there was a man 
named Grant, somewhere out West or South, and, 
while the telegraph was kept busy urging him North, 
the war department, in the person of Secretary 



i8 

Stanton, was hastily mounted on trucks and went 
careering over the country in search of this man, who 
was now its last and only hope. Of the results, it need 
only be said that Gen. Grant assumed command of this 
shattered, starving army ; that, by the force of his 
judgment and skill, he quickly changed its sixty-mile 
starvation base of supplies to one perfectly feasible ; 
that, from the condition of being practically prisoners 
of war, he assumed the aggressive, and, upon the 
arrival of Sherman, whose army Hallcck had been 
employing in building a worthless and useless railroad, 
he fought the battle of Chattanooga, scattering Bragg's 
army like chaff, and thereby also raising the siege of 
Knoxville. For this brilliant achievement Congress 
voted him a medal, which must have cost the nation as 
much as one or two hundred dollars, and I make 
special mention of it, because, with the possible excep- 
tion of a sword which they may at some time have 
" thrown in," this medal and a month or two of pay, as 
a retired officer, paid grudgingly and meanly, just 
before his death, (after being once refused by Congress), 
were all that the government he served so successfully 
and well, ever conferred upon him, over and above the 
regular pay which it would have given to the most 
imbecile blunderer, of equal rank, who might have led 
our armies to useless slaughter and the nation's ruin. 
But it should not be omitted, that, by reason of the 
shameful and shameless neglect of Gen. Grant, and his 
consequent necessary struggle to earn his daily bread, 
this trophy, like all his others, conferred by an admiring 



19 
world, fell into the hands of a man who sought to 
acquire celebrity by conferring them upon the govern- 
ment, and thus linking his name with a truly great 
man; so that, in this case, the generosity {!) of the 
government returned to it again. 

The Chattanooga campaign put at rest all doubts, if, 
in fact, any then existed in the minds of competent 
judges, as to who was the proper person to lead the 
Federal army to victory ; Gen. Grant being promoted 
to lieutenant-general and invested with full nouiinal 
command, but subject, in fact, to the constant meddling 
and blundering of Halleck and Stanton, which even the 
President himself could not entirely prevent. (See 
Vol. II of Grant's Memoirs.) Having made full dispo- 
sitions of all the Federal forces, and issued ample 
instructions to the various commanders, he prepared to 
move the army of the Potomac on its first victorious 
campaign ; that army then lying, for all practical 
military purposes, in the same relative position to the 
capital that it did in 1 86 1, before crossing arms with 
the Confederates. The desperate and prolonged 
struggle from the Rapidan river to Appomattox is 
too well known to be recited here. The sublime 
courage of Grant is best shown in the fact that he fully 
realized and believed, as he has left upon record, that 
he was taking the last chance, for, as he himself says, 
he did not believe the country could stand another 
year of the war, and another chance meant another 
campaign, and another campaign meant another 
year. 



20 

In view of relative numbers in the contending armies, 
the natural strength of the country to be traversed, the 
scries of fortifications already prepared for Lee's retiring 
army, the difficulties of transportation, and guarding 
of supplies, the two armies were as nearly matched as 
they ever had been, as is clearly shown by Gen. Grant 
in his memoirs. Hence the best general was bound to 
win. And that Lee fully realized that he was to meet 
a new kind of man was most clearl}' shown by the fact 
that during his long struggle with Grant, with the 
single exception of his attack upon and hurling back 
the sixth corps, at the beginning of the campaign, he 
always fought on the defensive. He indulged in no 
more such methods, as so placing his army that the 
Federals were between it and Richmond, as in 1862, on 
the Chickahominy ; or dividing his force in the face of 
the enemy, as in the Antietam campaign. On the 
contrary, Lee kept his army at all times in hand to 
repel the dreaded blows of Grant, who steadily forced 
Lee towards and finally inside his defences at Peters- 
burg and Richmond, never to leave them till forced 
out, to be compelled to surrender both his army and 
the Confederacy's last hope. 

In the meantime, Sherman, Grant's chosen first 
lieutenant, had fought his way, first to Atlanta, and 
then, adopting Grant's Vicksburg tactics, had cut 
adrift from his base and mowed a broad swath to the 
sea, whence he turned north towards Richmond, till 
halted by Grant, that the army of the Potomac might 
not have its pride wounded in not alone conquering 



21 

Richmond and Lee. Sheridan, another of Grant's 
military disciples, had swept the Shenandoah valley 
with a besom of destruction, and had wiped out Early's 
army. Thomas, in his slow manner, had pulverized 
Hood and his army, just in time to escape supercedure 
by Logan, whom Grant had sent for that purpose ; and 
Canby had in a dilatory manner reduced Mobile. 
These and other operations, all parts of Grant's 
comprehensive and masterly plan, brought the war 
to a more decided and successful termination than 
was ever any other great and well fought war where 
the parties were so evenly divided and the theatre 
of war of even approximate extent. 

And these operations had been, throughout, so 
conducted and so concluded, that Gen. Grant was held 
in even greater actual esteem by the vanquished, than 
by the victorious portion of the country ; for, during 
the stormy subsequent years of his life, when he, as 
chief magistrate, so wisely guided the country which 
his military ability had saved, almost the entire torrent 
of inevitable, malicious abuse, poured out against him 
by a partizan press and its abettors, came from the 
North, and the most northern of metropolitan cities, 
" cultured Boston," has the ignominious distinction 
of having furnished the only man who inaugurated and 
engineered a public meeting called to denounce Gen. 
Grant, where, in the old-time manner, the ineffable and 
exclusive coterie fraternized with the reeking and 
howling denizens of the purlieus of the city in denounc- 
ing a man whom all the rest of the world has gladly 



22 



honored, and for whom the entire body, rank and file 
of the armies which he conquered ever exhibited and 
expressed the most heartfelt respect and gratitude. 

In conclusion ; when we reflect, that from the opening 
of the war to the campaign of Donelson, the Union 
forces had achieved no material success anywhere ; that 
from Donelson to Chattanooga Grant had never led his 
men except to decisive and triumphant victory, that 
from Sumpter to Chattanooga no other general had 
achieved a decided success of important magnitude, 
the bare holding of positions, or averting defeat, being 
the nearest approach, by others, to great victories ; 
that, as already stated, Lee's army, for all strategic or 
tactical purposes, lay in the spring of 1864 where it did 
in 1 86 1, and that Richmond reposed within its cordon 
of defences as securely as when McClellan retreated in 
1862, without even (like Moses) " viewing- the promised 
land." That, as clearly shown by Gen. Grant, the 
armies before Washington were, in the spring of 1864, 
as evenly balanced, considering numbers and conditions, 
as in 1862. That the army of the Potomac, hard 
fighters as they were, had from their constant reverses 
become so imbued with a belief in the invincibility 
of Gen. Lee that, as Gen. Grant relates, it was their 
common remark to Grant's staff officers, when he first 
assumed command, that " Gen. Grant had not met 
Bobby Lee yet." That, from the first movement 
of the army under Grant towards Richmond, till the 
final surrender, no retrograde step was ever taken ; 
it was always " Hold what you have and gain what you 



23 

can." As, in fact, in his whole military career he was 
never once forced to retreat. 

That the system and methods of his advance towards 
Richmond, although it has been severely criticized by 
amateur soldiers, who have learned the whole art of war, 
by skilfully manoeuvring puppet soldiers, on velvet- 
mounted tables, in luxuriously appointed libraries, was 
so unlike all previous efforts made for the same 
purpose as to then seem to routine theorists, reckless 
and unwarrantable, yet was no doubt the only plan that 
could have succeeded, as certainly it was the only plan 
that ever began to succeed, and has long since received 
the admiring endorsement of the best military ability 
of the age. That at the close of the war, no Union 
officer stood out, as a great and successful commander, 
who had not served under Grant, and thus had the 
direct and practical benefit of his example, the inspir- 
ation of his genius, and been imbued with that 
indomitable, aggressive, and ever persistent courage and 
purpose, which, when coupled with a good degree 
of ability, always insured success. That, as viewed in 
the calmer light of receding years, no other man gave 
evidence of the possession of the rare and great 
qualities by aid of which he could in so gigantic a 
contest perfectly command himself and all others, and 
thus ultimately command full and complete success. 

And, lastly, when war had ceased and the contending 
armies had fallen back into the repose of peace, but, by 
the stupid bargaining and catering of the political force 
of the country, and the brutal act of the assassin, the 



24 

legislative and executive branches of the government 
were waging more bitter and quite as dangerous war 
upon each other, as that which he had hushed in the 
field, and when a vacillating and suddenly elevated 
president sought to dishonor the nation, by violating its 
plighted faith, given to a paroled army, and when these 
bitter dissensions threatened further disaster, and were 
hopelessly and forever frittering away in large degree 
the most important legitimate results of the war, the 
whole nation rested safely upon the strong arm and in 
the calm and balanced will and judgment of this silent 
man, around whom all loyal men would have rallied, by 
force of habit and instinct, well knowing that what he 
might do, or advise to be done, would be for the best 
interest of the whole people, who, by his genius, had, 
after so long and desperate a struggle, been delivered 
from national disruption and ruin. 

In view of all which, well may we devoutly and 
thankfully exclaim — 

Behold the Providence and the Man ! 

T. W. PORTER, 

Late Colonel \\th Regiment, 

Maine Infantry. 



,mS^.^ "'^ CONOrJEbb 



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